Openness In Health Care

In this paper, we provide some basics about open data and how this concept applies within the public health sector. Open data as a concept is widely applicable in several sectors and its importance have been articulated in a few commissioned documents as will be identified within this paper. Governments around the world are already creating policies to enhance data openness that is, providing detailed descriptions of how data relating to public welfare are managed. There are more emphases on making these data available to the public for free and also in the formats that can enhance reusability. Generally, open data can be said to be an umbrella term that is used to describe all forms of data that should be made open to the public, and public

It can help researchers working on health related topics in accessing the details they need and by extension enhance a healthier city, state, nation and the world at large. As mentioned in the preceding paragraph, the drive for data openness is gaining significant support in various quarters. For example, the concept of openness has gained significant strength within the technology environment with focus on open source application development and code sharing, the scientific community has also been pushing for open access to scholarly work and a number of initiatives have been launched in the past few years to support this. In addition, government agencies around the world are creating policies to enhance access and use of government data by

What are the factors that may enhance or inhibit openly available public health data and how do we position ourselves to solve these problems. Problems can range from policy to technical capability depending on which of this is dominant and some of these have been identified in the research literature. For example, research conducted by Vest and Issel (2014) which was a cross-sectional analysis of organizational factors associated with gaps in data sharing between state health agencies and local health departments in the areas of childhood immunizations, vital records, and reportable conditions reported that the proportion of local health departments experiencing a data sharing gap was 34.0 percent for immunizations, 69.8 percent for vital records, and 81.8 percent for reportable conditions. They further reported that increased state health agencies technological capacity and size reduced the odds of gaps. This is a problem relating technical capability. To provide an example relating to policy, Gasner, Fuld, Ann, and Jay (2014) conducted a study in New York that examined public health laws and agency policies for data sharing across HIV, sexually transmitted disease, tuberculosis, and viral hepatitis surveillance programs. They reported that recent changes to state laws provide greater opportunities for data sharing but that agency policies must be updated because they limit